


Choosing To Be Grateful

by LarielRomeniel



Series: Dispatches From The Time Bureau [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Speculation, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 07:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16677292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LarielRomeniel/pseuds/LarielRomeniel
Summary: Ava, the woman without real parents, tries to teach Nate something about appreciating the ones he has.





	Choosing To Be Grateful

**Author's Note:**

> Getting this in under the wire before 4x05 airs. It will of course be completely AU. But I still love the friendship between Nate and Ava, and I think the woman who doesn't have real parents can teach Nate something about appreciating the ones he has. Unbeta'd, so all errors are my own.

“I should warn you,” Nate said as he took the exit from I-66 into Falls Church, “my mom is the kind of person who starts getting ready for Christmas the day after Halloween. Baking, decorating… she goes a bit crazy.”

Ava looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. “Nate, that sounds  _ nice. _ You don’t have to apologize for it.”

“I’m not apologizing. Just want you to be... prepared.”

She laughed now. “We have dealt with Beebo-worshiping Vikings, Roman Legionnaires, possessed pirates and a time demon. Not to mention your dad’s forms in triplicate. A little bit of Christmas spirit at Thanksgiving will be…”

Whatever it would be was lost as Nate turned into the driveway of the Heywood home. “If only it was just a little bit,” he sighed, and Ava blinked at the tableau.

A sleigh was flying in front of the Heywood home, pulled by eight -- no, make that nine -- not-so-tiny reindeer, galloping two-by-two into the air on a metal framework, with Rudolph in the lead. Not far away, elves in pastel blues and pinks frolicked around a fountain while a mustachioed snowman strummed a banjo, and an even more impressively mustachioed prospector drove a dogsled just under Rudolph’s hooves. The columns of the front entry were wrapped in giant red ribbons, looking like enormous candy canes. Potted poinsettias lined the stairs to the front door, which was flanked on either side by a life-sized Santa and Mrs. Claus. Literally topping it all off, the front balcony was covered with a virtual colony of penguins that surrounded a giant white… _thing,_ which was surveying the entire scene with a silly, toothless grin.

Ava goggled at the sight as she got out of the car. Absently, she heard Nate sigh again, and say, “I know, its--”

“It’s fantastic!” she exclaimed, turning to him with a huge smile.

Now it was Nate’s turn to goggle. “You really think so?” he asked disbelievingly.

Ava chuckled at his expression. “Nate, you know I didn’t have a real childhood. I never got anything like this.”

“Well, if you like this, just wait until you see the inside!” Nate warned as they went up the stairs. “Oh, and I should warn you--”

_ “HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!”  _  The Santa next to the door came to life, making Ava jump with a startled laugh. 

“--Santa Claus has a motion detector,” Nate finished. “And I’ll tell you now - there’s gonna be a little singing tree in the guest bathroom, also with a motion detector. For some reason Hank thinks it’s funny to put it there.”

He reached for the door knob (under an evergreen wreath glittering with sparkly silk poinsettias and frosted pinecones). “Brace yourself!” he said as he opened the door.

Ava hadn’t thought her eyes could get any wider, but  _ this…   _ “Your mother did all this?”

Nate hummed in…  _ underwhelmed _ affirmation. “Every year for as long as I can remember.”

A miniature Christmas village stood on the small table in the middle of the foyer. To her left, a large stuffed bear in a Santa cap and scarf sat in a chair. To her right, garlands of holly wound about the banisters of a large staircase. The sconces on the walls were festooned with swags of fir.

Nate led Ava further in, past a sideboard laden with a Nativity scene and another decked out with Disney characters all in Christmas finery. They wound up in a room dominated by a 12-foot-tall Christmas tree, trimmed within an inch of its life. If there was any evergreen under the layers of garlands and ornaments, Ava certainly couldn’t see it.

“Nate! You’re here!” Ava turned to see a petite blond woman approach Nate with open arms and a bright smile.

“Hi, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, hugging the woman. “Um, Mom, I’d like to introduce Ava…”

“Ava Sharpe!” Now the bright smile was turned Ava’s way. Nate’s mother extended a hand. “Henry’s been telling me about you. I’m pleased to meet you.”   


Ava shook her hand. “Thank you for the invitation, Mrs. Heywood.”

“Please, call me Dot! And it’s my pleasure to have you here. Nate told me you don’t have a family to celebrate with?”

Ava shook her head, grimacing a little at the thought of the rented family Rip had fooled her with for years. “No, I don’t.  And my girlfriend and her crew wound up having a job to take care of today, so...”

“Well, we are delighted to have you here!” Dot said. “Nate, what do you think of the tree?”

Nate looked it up and down and chuckled. “I don’t know how you do it every year, Mom!”

“Well, I will admit it’s getting harder to manage the top third,” Dot answered with a little laugh of her own.

“That’s because you keep insisting on trees the size of redwoods,” came another voice. Hank Heywood came into the room from the kitchen. Ava bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at his big apron blazoned with a turkey. “Director Sharpe, glad you could join us today. Agent Green minding the store?”

“Yes, he is. Thank you for having me, sir, I...” Ava began, but Dot interrupted.

“Henry, she is our guest. No work talk, and need for formality here!” Dot chided. “We are going to call you Ava. And you call us Dot and Henry, you hear? No  _ sirs _ or  _ ma’ams _ in here!”

“Yes, ma’ -- er, Dot!” Ava nodded, and so did Hank --  _ Henry, _ although he rolled his eyes a little. Nate smirked just a little at his father’s discomfort, but schooled his face into a more serious expression when Dot glanced at him. “Speaking of formality, Mom - you didn’t set the dining room table?”

Ava looked in the direction Nate was nodding, where a large formal dining room table stood. It was covered with a tablecloth of holly against a crisp white background, and on it sat a centerpiece of pine branches and roses, but there were no plates or utensils.

Dot waved it away. “It’s just the four of us, so we’ll eat in the kitchen this year. Come on, I’ve got some wine and some little things to tide us over. The turkey’s going to take a bit… Henry brought home a 20-pounder from the farm store! I can send you home with leftovers for weeks!” She snickered. “And Henry complains about the size of my Christmas trees!”

“That’s what the store was holding for us, Dot!” Henry countered as they followed her into the kitchen. “Paul said they set aside what we’ve been getting every year.”

“You’ve been getting a 20-pound turkey every year for just the two of you?” Nate asked, accepting a wine glass from his mother.

Dot shook her head. “Not just for the two of us, dear. We’ve been hosting young service men and women for Thanksgiving for the past few years,” she explained, opening a bottle of wine and pouring for Nate and Ava. “Such stories they tell! And they’re so happy to have something like home for the holiday.”

Henry was peeking through the oven window at the roasting turkey. “They’re serving their country. Figured it was the least we could do.” He reached for the turkey baster and opened the oven.

“But you’re not having any over this year?” Ava asked.

“Not this year. We wanted to be able to focus on Nate. It’s the first Thanksgiving we’ve had with him in...what, ten years, dear? Between the job you’re doing now…” Dot put up a hand to forestall Nate’s answer, “And I know it’s classified, Nathaniel! I haven’t been a military wife for 40 years without learning when I can’t have all the answers! But before that there were your studies in Paris, in Munich, London, Tokyo… He’s been quite the traveler, Ava!”

“More like he was running away,” Henry grumbled as he poured turkey drippings over the huge bird.

“Hank, I…”

“Henry…”

“No, Dot! Stop making excuses for him!” Henry shouted, shoving the turkey back into the oven and closing the door. He whirled back toward the others. “Nathaniel, do you know why I started inviting those young soldiers here? It was for your mother! Not having you here for the holiday… it made her wilt, year after year. After the third time you skipped Thanksgiving to go gallivanting, she couldn’t even muster the will to decorate for Christmas!”

Nate blinked. “I didn’t know…”

“Of course you didn’t know! You didn’t bother to ask! You hardly bothered to call! It’s one thing to do that to me, but to your own mother?”

Ava’s eyes were wide again, but this time with horrified embarrassment at being caught in the middle of this argument, with Nate looking like he’d been spitted and Henry puffed up in anger. Dot’s eyes were downcast, and the hand holding her wine glass trembled. 

Nate looked up, as if trying to find words. Then he set his glass down and strode out of the kitchen, back toward the room with the Christmas tree.

Henry visibly deflated then. “I’m sorry, Director Sharpe. I didn’t mean… I didn’t…” He sighed and walked to a door leading outside, going out and standing in the crisp autumn air.

Dot took a sip from her wine glass, then set it down. “I am sorry, too, Ava,” she said. “I thought Nate and his father were making progress, but… Well. Henry is always defensive of me, even when I don’t need him to be. I know Nate’s not always… comfortable here at home. He still blames me for keeping him cooped up when he was a little boy.”

“I don’t think he blames you,” Ava replied.

Dot smiled slightly. “Maybe the grown-up part of him doesn’t. But the isolated little boy? I know he’s still angry about that. Just as Henry is still angry that Nate had to be isolated and didn’t grow up to be the son he’d been expecting when I got pregnant.”

Dot laid a hand on Ava’s arm. “Would you go talk to Nate, while I talk to Henry? You’ll probably find him in the basement. The door’s just down the hall, to the right.”

Nate was indeed in the basement, listlessly spinning the rods of a foosball table. Ava gave a low whistle as she took in the movie and rock band posters on the walls, and the large TV with its gaming console. “This must have been everybody’s favorite hangout when you were a teenager.”

Nate scoffed, spinning one last rod before collapsing into one of the bean bag chairs on the floor. “Probably would’ve been if anybody’d wanted to hang out with me. By the time my parents let me out of Hemophilia House Arrest, everybody thought I was just some weirdo,” he said.

Ava took the other bean bag chair. “From what you’ve told me before, I’m pretty sure they meant well,” she said.

“They always meant well,” Nate conceded. “Mom went decoration-crazy to try to make it all up to me. And Hank… he’d come down here every once in a while to play a game. But he’d never stay long. Always back to work.” 

He sighed. “It was a lonely way to grow up.”

“Maybe,” Ava answered. “I don’t claim to have all the answers, Nate. I didn’t have parents, not real ones.” She paused, thinking. “Maybe… maybe that is the answer.”

Nate frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“All I had were two people Rip paid to pretend they were my parents. And while I have these memories of awkward holidays with them, I always knew something was off,” Ava said thoughtfully. “They always seemed… distant. Like they didn’t really care what I did.”

“Sounds good to me,” Nate grumbled.

“No! That’s not the point!” Ava exclaimed. “Nate, your parents care what you do because they love you. Your mother missed you for all those Thanksgivings, and while your dad may act like he’s just protecting her feelings - I think he missed you too.”

Nate slumped a little in his bean bag, considering. Ava watched him for a moment, then said, “Growing up may have been lonely for you, but I think growing old is getting lonely for them.”

Nate tilted his head back and considered the ceiling. (And Ava now noted the model spaceships that hung from it.) He sighed, and said, “I’ll go talk to them.”

Ava smiled. “Good. Just call me when it’s okay.”

Nate pushed himself up out of the chair and bounded up the stairs. Ava levered herself out of her own chair (who the hell thought bean bag chairs were a good idea?) and wandered around the room, studying the posters (was that really an original  _ Star Wars _ movie poster?), the shelves of books (quite an eclectic collection of science fiction, and Ava bet there were more than a few first editions in there) and the video game collection (just how many versions of Zelda were there?) before wandering over to the foosball table and spinning its rods.

It was lonely.

“Ava?”

Dot Heywood was standing at the top of the stairs. “Thank you for talking to Nate.”

“Is he…?” Ava wasn’t really sure what she wanted to ask.

Dot seemed to understand anyway. (Maybe it was something real mothers just did?) “He and Henry are talking. And maybe finding some… common ground. Neither of them have had an easy time accepting their differences, and I’m sure there will be a step back for every step forward. But for now, I’m thankful to have my family here. And to have you with us.”

“Thanks again.” Ava grimaced at the buzzing of her phone. “I’m sorry, Dot. Do you mind if I…”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

Ava pulled the phone from her pocket and smiled to see who was calling. “Sara? You guys finished already?”

_ “Yeah. It was a monster of a job, but we pulled it off. How are you doing?” _

“It’s… nice. I’m here with Nate’s mom--” Ava paused as Dot waved for her attention. “Hang on a sec, Sara.”

“Tell her to come on over! And to bring her team!” Dot said.

Ava wrinkled her forehead, doing a mental head count. “That’s… six more. Are you sure?”

Dot waved away her concern. “Of course! You saw how big that turkey is! We have plenty to go around!”

“Okay.” Ava turned her attention back to the call. “Sara…”

_ “We heard. Tell Mrs. Heywood thanks, we would love to,” _ Sara said.

_ “As long as they’re not serving calamari!” _ Mick called from the background.

Ava could hear laughter from the rest of the Waverider crew.  _ “We’ll be there in a little bit,” _ Sara said.

“Can’t wait,” Ava told her, and ended the call. She pocketed her phone and smiled gratefully at Dot. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Dot smiled. “Now, it looks like we’re going to need to use the dining room after all! Come and help me set the table.”


End file.
